Construction of S-scheme CuFe12O19/CuS green nanocomposite for effective photocatalytic degradation of tetracycline from aqueous solution: mechanism, recyclability, and kinetic study

Abstract This research was designed to evaluate the performance of the CuFe12O19/CuS/Xenon system in the degradation of tetracycline in aqueous solutions. In this study, after green synthesis of nanocomposite using the extract of the Artemisia plant, its properties were determined by XRD, FTIR, FESEM, TEM, BET, XPS, DRS, DLS, EDS, VSM, and PL. In addition, parameters affecting the photocatalytic degradation of tetracycline, including time, pH, TC initial concentration, and nanocomposite dose, were assessed. The findings showed that the degradation efficiency increases with increasing pH and catalyst dosage. Under optimum circumstances (pH = 9, nanocomposite dose of 0.5 g/L, and time 200 min), the process efficiency with concentration of 20 mg/L was 100%. The kinetics of the degradation rate of tetracycline obeyed the pseudo-first-order equation. In addition, the results show that after six consecutive cycles, the synthesized catalyst’s ability did not significantly reduce. The results of the mineralization tests revealed that the COD and TOC degradation of the synthetic solution of tetracycline with a concentration of 20 mg/L reached 87.25% and 73.06%, respectively, in the optimal reaction conditions. The scavenger experiments confirmed that OH plays the most crucial role in the decomposition process of tetracycline. Generally, the CuFe12O19/CuS/Xenon photocatalytic system can effectively degradation tetracycline from aqueous environments.